Have you ever used your professional development budget to attend a conference? Or to let someone on your team attend? Conferences can be great - for hearing new perspectives, learning new tools, meeting new people. But they're NOT professional development.

There are plenty of great strategy books, but some of the best books for strategists aren’t ostensibly about strategy at all. Here are a few I like.

Most of us have that person in our lives who will give us honest - sometimes brutally so - feedback. A friend or sibling or partner who will tell us when we’re talking too loud at a restaurant, if we’re snoring in the Amtrak quiet car, or if we have spinach in our teeth at the cocktail reception. But at work these people are harder to come by.

Most strategists can benefit from having a defined point of view. Yes, you have to be good at your craft and also have the horizontal capabilities all strategists need. A point of view is a little different. It’s the lens you often look through to see what your clients are facing and what their customers want. And it can create a virtuous cycle to accelerate your career.

We usually think of strategy sitting between the client with a business objective, and a creative or product team who want to build something, right? That creates a linear process. The strategist hears what the client wants, and then translates it into something the creative team can work with. Like a game of telephone. It’s funny in the game when details get fuzzy and meanings change. Not so much in a creative presentation though.